When saving a file in quite a deep file path the error “The file name would be too long for the destination folder.” may present itself. This is due to an old Win32 parameter called MAX_PATH, which is defined as MAX_PATH = 260, meaning the maximum file path is 260 characters.

A file path at maximum length would consist of:

• A drive letter e.g. C: – which is always two characters
• A root Backslash e.g. \ -which is always one character
• Folder names, Backslashes and filenames/extensions – this has a limit of 256 characters
• A Null Terminator e.g. \0 – Windows reserves one character to mark the end of the path

Having deep folders are the most common reason for this. Each subfolder adds extra characters to the path. For example, a long chain such as “C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Projects\2025\february\Reports\Final\Backup\Archive\…” can quickly reach the 260-character limit. Even though NTFS (New Technology File System), which is the default file system for windows 10, 11 and server, supports much longer file paths the windows API does not.

Services like SharePoint can cause unique issues with this limitation as SharePoint itself does not have this same limitation. However, when SharePoint is synced to a windows computer and the file paths are over the limit it will present a sync error stating that a file has exceeded the maximum file path length by x number of characters.

The best ways to prevent this happening are:

• Not having long folder names e.g. changing full dates to abbreviated dates or abbreviating certain words such as Information Technologies to IT.
• Not having extremely long file names e.g. having full dates or very detailed titles.
• Renaming downloaded files or images as images may be given unique identifiers on the sites, they are downloaded from which can be very long e.g. example-image-4f9a2c7b-91e3-4e8a-9f3a-ccf2c8e3b9a1.png